Radar systems may use an active electronically scanned array (AESA) to steer a radar beam. An AESA includes an antenna populated with transmit and receive elements. The weight and cost of an AESA are typically proportional to the number of transmit elements. A known technique for reducing the cost and weight is to randomly eliminate transmit elements. Decreasing the number of transmit elements, however, reduces array gain and radio frequency (RF) power. Moreover, randomly eliminating transmit elements degrades side lobe performance. Accordingly, it is difficult to have low cost, light weight effective signal communication using an AESA.